...free trade as order keeping arrangements, which of course they used to be. But after Nixon did away with the Bretton Woods arrangements, American policy became more predatory than supportive. The IMF and World Bank are, outside the Atlantic community, seen more and more as tools of predatory capitalism. What Ikenberry says about the ‘Western order’ being “built around rules and norms of nondiscrimination and market openness, creating conditions for rising states to advance their expanding economic and political goals within it” has not been true for a long time. When he gets to the WTO Ikenberry shows the usual unfamiliarity among international relations scholars with the facts on the ground resulting from Doha-round related globalization. There is no reason to assume that Ikenberry’s heart, like that of the late Rawls, is in any other but the right place. But he should begin to serve, with his undoubted scholarly gifts, the conversation on the big global picture by taking a good look out of his window. Of course the Chinese leadership’s hopes are for an international order of which they are a respected member. But drop that limiting ‘Western’ adjective, and realize that such order can only be achieved collectively....

...it to survive in reasonable comfort, if it demonstrates respect for Russian anxieties of having a potentially hostile alliance, smack dab against Russian borders, and if room is made in its world-ordering efforts for unconditional Chinese participation. An amazing phenomenon in Europe is the stream of suggestions penned by European commentators about what Obama ought to do once he is president. They are no doubt much influenced by the ubiquitous American commentary they must have read. But the amazing part is the absence of a European dimension to all that advice. President Obama is not at all served by scared and sycophantic vassals. What he will need instead is fearless input from former allies who wish to regain the best aspects of a post-World-War-II world order committed to international law; an order of which the United States itself was the main architect. That means first and foremost the forceful rejection of preventive war as a policy tool. Such rejection is the minimum that European officials also owe the citizens of the Union’s member countries, if an integrated Europe is to remain true to its original purpose of abolishing war. In the current recipes for a desirable world order the assumption...